


Victory Under Moonlight

by MalevolentKing



Series: SAO [1]
Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Clearer Black Cats, Eventual Romance, F/M, Moonlit Black Cats Live, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:07:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29592579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalevolentKing/pseuds/MalevolentKing
Summary: Do you ever have that one day? Where something you were looking forward to turned out to good to be true? Well, welcome to my life. Because of course with my luck, I'd happen to get stuck in a death game.
Relationships: Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito/Yuuki Asuna | Asuna
Series: SAO [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2174103
Comments: 2





	Victory Under Moonlight

The joy of something new. That’s what brings people through the day. At least, that’s what I thought. Sword Art Online, the first ever virtual reality massive multiplayer online role-playing game, or VRMMORPG, was being released this year. The first game to take advantage of the intensity of the NerveGear hardware.

I wasn’t as big of a gamer as my friends were. Although I still enjoyed playing games after school in the computer club. The six of us were currently waiting in the long line, to be one of the lucky 10,000 to get the game. Honestly, I was excited, but I had some reservations. What if the game was overhyped? Sure, the beta testers had mostly positive reviews, but still.

I was knocked out of my musings by one of my friends throwing his arm around my shoulders. Looking over, I saw the president of the computer club, Keita Miyagi.

“What’s got you all up in a fuss, Kenji?”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes, adjusting my glasses from their position. I put on an easygoing smile and scratched the back of my head.

“Ah… Nothing to worry about Keita. I was just stuck in my own head.”

The other members of my friend group all chuckled at this reaction. They were probably used to stuff like this. I often spent most of my time in my own head. Out of everyone in the computer club I was the most quiet. Not because I’m unconfident, per se, just because I usually don’t see the point in talking. There’s no point, I’m not the protagonist, I’m barely even a supporting character, nobody cares about what I have to say. 

Keita shrugged and removed his arm from my shoulders. He then walked over and started talking to his cousin, Sachi Yoshimura. She was a cute, if shy girl. She was a first year, and only joined this club because Keita wanted her to find more friends. She fit in relatively well, but was still shy, trying to get her to open was a task everyone was taking seriously. I thought she was sweet, and a kind girl. 

I glanced to the side and saw Ryuu Kumiko and Ryuji Dezaki talking. To stop the confusion between the two of them due their similar names, we called them by derivatives of their last names. The final member of the computer club, Osamu Shimada was laughing at something that another person in line said. 

The man was hanging out with a group of his own friends, and had spiky reddish hair and a scruffy face. Osamu caught me glancing and rolled his eyes.

“Kenji, ya mope! Get over here and have some fun or somethin’!”

I chuckled slightly and walked over towards the two of them. Osamu grinned at me as I walked over and pumped his fist in excitement, his green eyes shining in joy. 

“Yes, Osamu?” I said, with a raised eyebrow.

“Dude! Lighten up! We’re here to get the greatest game of all time. The least ya could do is crack a friggin’ smile.” He chuckled, “Like honestly, dude. If I didn’t know any better I’d say you didn’t have any friends here and were just stalkin’ Deza and Kumi.”

“Right. My bad, Osamu.”

He just groaned, “You’re hopeless…”

I grinned, “Oh, would you look at that, we’re almost at the door and there’s still a few hundred copies to get.”

The next hour passed by quickly as we all got our games. We saw the man with his friends get their picture taken with the game. 

“Hold up, hold up.” Deza said.

We all stopped and looked at him.

“Okay, don’t you think we should share what we’re gonna name our avatars? I mean, I know Keita and Sachi are gonna name their avatars after themselves, they always do. But for us sane people? I’m going with Ducker.”

Kumi was the first to respond, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll stick with my usual, Tetsuo.”

“I’ll go with my usual, too. Sasamaru, I guess.” Osamu said with a shrug.

Everyone then turned to look at me. That’s right, I changed my online alias on a game to game basis. I’ll never be the same person twice. They always bully me for it, but it’s boring to always be the same person. Especially in an RPG. What’s a cool sounding name? Should I name myself after a god? That would be kinda interesting, but which one?

“Raiden.”

* * *

In the silence of my room, one of my dogs pushed open the door and sat at the end of my bed. I took a quick glance down. Recognizing the german shepherd coat of Omen, I pet him on the head and went back to setting up my NerveGear. Putting it on my head, I went through all of the calibrations. It seemed a little weird that I had to pat my body, and that it asked for my height and age, but I guess it was security stuff. 

Putting the helmet on, I laid down on my bed, Omen put his head on my stomach and I started absentmindedly petting him while I was waiting for the clock to strike 13:00. Exactly at the change to the next hour, I stopped petting Omen.

“Link start!”

And the world faded around me, bright white for only a split second. Then suddenly a barrage of colors, it hurt my eyes slightly. The system did a checklist, making sure all of my senses were indeed active. Surprise, surprise, they are.

It had me pick a language, Japanese, obviously. And then it wanted me to create an account, which I did. I went through the character creation process, having no problems with my appearance really, I just made it look like me. Granted it was a little buffer to make it more intimidating and no system quite has a hair option that’s quite as messy as my real life hair so I went with a ponytail. But everything else was identical.

«Welcome to Sword Art Online!»

The whole world blended into view in front of me. It was honestly fascinating. I could smell the fresh air, and feel the wind blowing in my hair, and hear all the sounds surrounding me. I could see multiple bright blue flashes of light as other players joined the game. I walked over and sat on the edge of the hedge plant about ten feet from the spawn point.

I watched the people spawn and walk away, some grouped up. One specifically took off running as soon as he spawned. He looked like he knew where he was going. Must’ve been a beta tester, lucky dude. 

Paying attention to the gamer-tags of people spawning. Eventually on top of an over two meter goliath of a man, I saw Tetsuo. His avatar was tall, as if he wasn’t tall enough in real life. Wearing heavy armor with a purple tint, he was carrying a mace and a shield. 

“Yo, Tetsuo!” I heard another voice say. 

A lean man came out of nowhere, with long green hair and green eyes. Sasamaru. Strapped to his back was a spear. He was wearing green leather armor.

I stepped forward, “That enough green for you Sasamaru?”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye with s stupid grin, “You know it isn’t, Raiden.”

“Don’t tell me they’re already fighting…” I heard someone mutter.

Turning around I saw Keita and Sachi with an energetic Ducker tailing behind them. Keita looked a lot like his real life self, just like me. Just with shorter hair. Sachi on the other hand did a full overhaul. She was taller than her normal self, with long curly brown hair and blue eyes. The beauty mark underneath her eye had been removed. Ducker was short, just over five feet with black hair and black leather armor and a dagger strapped to his hip. He was glancing around the whole city with a super hyped look on his face, like he couldn’t believe what was going on around him. Not that I couldn’t relate, but something seemed off about him.

Ah well, I’d ask about it later.

“Alright guys, what's our first goal? Like, are we gonna learn the combat mechanics today or just mess around?” I heard Keita ask.

Ducker put his hand on his chin for a second, and then smiled, “What if we learned the basics of combat and then when searching for a dungeon? Treasure hunting!”

“That’s not a bad idea, Ducker.” I said, “But I think we should focus more on combat stuff today. We can always get back online tomorrow and try the treasure hunting thing.”

He pouted slightly, “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Alrighty then, let’s go look for some monsters to farm!” Sasamaru cheered.

Keita pointed his shortsword at the sky with a small smile on his face, “Onwards!”

The rest of the party cheered and followed him towards the fields. I shook my head with a small smile and followed at a more sedate pace. It was nice that nobody was looking at us strangely for being as excited as we were. It was a nice change of pace. 

The group all stopped at a field, there were dozens of manic looking boars grazing in the grass. They were labelled as «Frenzy Boar». Their fur was matted and dark grey, their tusks were curved and jagged, and their eyes were beady and glowing red.

Interestingly enough they seemed to be ignoring us, just grazing. Which was odd considering how intimidating they appeared to be. Maybe they were passive until provoked? Only one way to find out. While the rest of my friends were looking for monsters hiding in the grass, I picked a rock up off of the ground and threw it at the creature closest to us.

Something in the system clicked into place, and the rock started glowing a slight red when I threw it and it smashed into the «Frenzy Boar» which let out a loud squeal. It turned towards me, now with a bright red pixelated mark on its face. 

Grunting in anger, the boar took off in my direction, instinctively I swung my curved sword forward and slashed the boar. Knocking it back about a foot or two. Readjusting itself, it charged at me again and I slashed another time, but it managed to move through my guard and knock me down. While I was on the ground, I noticed my friends fighting an individual boar on their own. Sachi was struggling, even though she had advantage due to the spear she was wielding, thus could maintain a large gap, she was clearly nervous. 

Something clicked in me, watching her being so nervous. I sprung up off the ground and started walking towards the boar harassing her, and I put my sword on my shoulder as I slowly paced forward. Again, something in the system clicked and I could feel it guiding my motions, I dropped into a low stance, and shot forward in a burst of speed, swinging my sword so it pointed in front of me. The blade of my sword glowed a bright orange color as I charged through the boar with a sound like glass shattering. As blue particles flew out from the place where the boar no longer stood, a ringing sound went off, and a white screen appeared. I was rewarded 24 experience and 30 Col (must be the form of currency in Aincrad). 

Sachi stared at me in shock as the rest of our friends slowly cleaned up the remaining boars. Her eyes wide, as I took out the original boar with the same charge I did on hers. 

“T-that was actually pretty impressive, Raiden.” Sachi said.

I turned to her with a raised eyebrow, “Hmm?”

“The way you defeated both of those boars! You should teach me how to do that.” Her face got set into a stony visage, “I want to be strong like you!”

“Woah, woah. Calm down Sachi. Of course I’ll help you where I can.” I turned towards Keita, “This area is basically cleared. You wanna go hunt around somewhere else?”

Keita shot a look around the field and nodded, “Yeah. Let’s move out!”

We continued hunting for a few hours, Sachi actually got the hang of fighting, but was still slightly anxious. Eventually we got bored of hunting and just sat down at the edge of a forest. 

“This place is kinda cool, don’t you think guys?” Keita asked, leaning on a tree.

Ducker nodded with vigor, “Yeah, this place is awesome!”

“I second that, Ducker!” said Sasamaru.

“It is pretty cool, I admit.” Tetsuo said with a chuckle.

Sachi only nodded. 

Everyone turned to look at me, I mean what was I supposed to say? Of course I like it, I’d be stupid not to. But it was getting late, I should probably head back to the real world. My parents and younger sister would probably be getting ready for dinner at this point. 

“Yeah, this game is really cool. But I think we’re having dinner soon, so I should go.”

Keita shrugged, “Suit yourself, Raiden. See you tomorrow.”

I nodded with a grin. And swiped down, ready to open the logout menu. But the button wasn’t there. I mean, it was there, it just was unlabeled and didn’t react to me pressing it. Almost as if it had been removed, or maybe it was a bug on my NerveGear. I had to find out, because either way was concerning.

“Hey guys, I can’t log out.”

“What do you mean? The button should be at the bottom of the menu.” Tetsuo supplied.

“Yeah, I know that’s where it should be, but it isn’t!” I snapped, “Sorry, that was uncalled for. Can you guys just check your menus?”

They all did, and slowly I came to a realization. This isn’t a bug. Something is seriously wrong with this game.

No sooner did I come to that realization did the sound of a loud bell echo throughout the land and the world got blurry. A bright light encapsulated my entire being, and suddenly we were back in the spawn plaza. A forced teleport? I was deaf to everything around me. I was hearing nothing. Adrenaline was pumping through my virtual body and I was on high alert. 

Bright blue flashes of light spawned everyone back into the world. People were glancing around in confusion.

I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A bright red flashing hexagon, with the words: Warning, System Announcement. Suddenly it replicated itself and thousands more appeared, taking a dome shape around the plaza. Painting the area in an eerie dark red glow. 

Static.

Abruptly, the cracks in the dome started leaking a thick red substance. Blood. They formed into a cocoon, with sparks flying off of it from the intensity, and from this twisted chrysalis a large robed figure appeared. His robes were red, and his hood covered his face, submerging it in darkness. I knew who this was though. It could only be one man.

“Kayaba.” I muttered.

In a show of grandeur, the figure spread his arms wide apart. Mimicking the form of a cross. And he spoke. In a deep voice, way deeper than the actual voice of Kayaba.

“Attention, players. Welcome to my world.”

His world? I don’t know who this guy thinks he is, but his attitude was really starting to grate on me. And he’d only said two sentences.

“My name is Akihiko Kayaba. As of this moment, I am the sole person who can change this world.”

People around the entire plaza began muttering things. But this man ignored each and everyone, focused only on what he was about to say. The perceived importance of his words brought a chill down my spine.

“I’m sure that you’ve noticed that the log out button is missing from the main menu.” He spoke, like this next line was important, and I could tell it was, “This is not a defect in the game. I repeat. This is not a defect in the game. It is a feature in Sword Art Online. You cannot log out of SAO yourselves. And no one on the outside can shut down or remove the NerveGear. Should this be attempted, the transmitter inside the NerveGear will emit a powerful microwave, destroying your brain, and thus ending your life.”

What? This is more intense than I originally thought. Something is seriously wrong with this man. 

I heard yelling from off to the side, “Hey, I can’t get out!”

I looked at my friends. Keita had his eyes wide, Tetsuo had his head low and was standing in dead silence, and Sasamaru was tightly gripping his spear. It was Ducker and Sachi that worried me. They were silent, Sachi had her head in her hands and was hyperventilating, and Ducker had tears coming down his face. He never cried.

Kayaba spoke up again, “Unfortunately, several players' friends and families have ignored this warning and have attempted to remove the NerveGear. As a result, 213 players are gone forever, from both Aincrad and the real world.”

“What? 213! You’re friggin’ crazy, dude!” Sasamaru yelled.

Kayaba held up his left hand and waved it around, and dozens of news channels broadcasting this showed up around him. There were some written articles peppered in there as well. Floating on little tiny screens. Tiny relative to him, at least.

“As you can see, new organizations across the world are reporting this, even the deaths. Thus, you can assume that the danger of a NerveGear being removed is now minimal. I hope you will relax and attempt to clear the game.”

Looking at all the screens I saw one with my father standing still behind police tape. A look in his eyes that I had never seen before, my mother crying into his chest, he was rubbing her back. His stare was hard. My sister had collapsed to her knees and was sobbing uncontrollably. My father just looked at the paramedics wheeling my comatose body into the ambulance.

“But I want you to remember this clearly. There is no longer any method to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be forever lost.” as he was speaking the screens blinked out around him, “And simultaneously, the NerveGear will destroy your brain. There is only one means of escape. To complete the game.”

Again he waved his hand and a diagram of Aincrad showed up in front of him, with a red dot signaling where we were.

“You are presently on the lowest floor of Aincrad, Floor 1. If you make your way through the dungeon and defeat the Floor Boss, you may advance to the next level. Defeat the final boss on Floor 100 and you will clear the game.”

Everyone around me began getting rowdy. Panicking. I couldn’t blame them, I was also panicking. But my panic was mostly internal. I was staring forward glassy eyed, waiting for this megalomaniac to finish his speech. So I could get out of this hell hole and choke the life from his insane body.

“Clear all hundred floors? That’s impossible. The beta testers never made it anywhere near that high!” Somebody yelled from somewhere.

“Finally, I’ve added a present from me to your inventory. Please see for yourselves.”

Curious, against all common sense. I swiped down and opened my inventory. The item was a mirror. What could this do? I pressed the button and a mirror materialized in my hand. A small square shaped hand mirror. I held it up to my face. I saw the face of my avatar. The long red hair pulled into a ponytail and the pale blue eyes. I don’t know what was supposed to happen with this? Suddenly I heard screaming and saw bright blue flashes of light. No! Not again! One enveloped me as well. 

As the light subsided, I was standing in a group of people I didn’t recognize. And some I did. Oh no. I lifted the mirror up to my face and it showed my real look, the messy red hair, and the pale blue eyes. Keita, Sachi, Tetsuo, and Sasamaru all looked like their real selves. The only one who didn’t was Ducker. He didn’t look like Deza. It was his younger brother! That’s what was so off.

“Hikaru what are you doing here?!” Tetsuo demanded.

His face went pale and the tears kept streaming down his face, “Ryuji let me play first…”

“How?” Sasamaru muttered, “How did they get our real appearances?”

“I think the NerveGear has cameras or something like that in the headpiece.” I supplied.

“Okay, okay, but how did they get our builds? How did I go from the height I was to my real one?” he queried.

“Uhhh…” I didn’t have an answer for that one.

“The calibrations!” Keita popped in, “It must’ve been the part where we had to pat our bodies.”

“I had thought that was a little odd…” I muttered, “Oh wait, it looks like he’s got more to say.”

“Right now, you’re probably wondering, ‘Why? Why would Akihiko Kayaba, developer of Sword Art Online and the NerveGear, do all this?’ My goal has already been achieved. I created Sword Art Online for one reason…” He paused dramatically, “To create this world and intervene in it. And now, it is complete. This ends the tutorial for the official Sword Art Online launch. Good luck, players.”

After finishing his speech, a dreadful sound, like the old dial up internet began coming from him. As his body glitched out and turned to smoke, he returned to the dome and it instantly blinked out of existence. There were no physical signs that anything had gone wrong, but I could feel the tension in the air. My fists were clenched so hard, if I were still in the real world I’d be drawing blood. 

“Kayaba.” I growled out. 

A million things were running through my brain. How to escape here was at the top most priority. Protecting my friends was up there as well. I would not let them die. Myself, not as important. But I would stay alive to make sure that friends do as well.

As all those thoughts were running through my head, someone dropped a mirror. A shattering sound echoed throughout the complete and utter silence of the aftermath of Kayaba’s revelation. And with the sound of glass shattering and the scream of a girl. Everyone began panicking. 

We needed to get out of here. But all of my friends were so trapped in their own world. Panicking running things over in their heads. The only one still semi coherent of what was going on around him was Keita. 

The two of us made eye contact with each other and a silent understanding passed between us. I walked over and grabbed Hikaru, or I guess he is Ducker now, and tapped Tetsuo on the shoulder. Keita walked over and wrapped Sachi in a hug and pulled her away, purposely bumping into Sasamaru on the way by. As each of us were knocked out of our stupors we began fleeing the plaza.

With nowhere to go and no idea what to do, we’d figure it out. We had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So given that we don't know a lot about the Black Cats outside of The Death Game, I've taken some creative liberties with some stuff. In this story I'm basically gonna have the Black Cats be taking a big center stage. They will be clearers from the get-go due to Raiden's influence in the story. I don't know specifically the measure and scale of their power by the time game has been cleared. A part of me wants to make it a massive guild on par with the DDA, KotB, and ALF. But I think I like the idea of a small clearing guild. Any thoughts on that?
> 
> Anyway, that's not important. I don't really care about any backlash for me taking liberties.
> 
> What does matter is this. For the most part this is going to be a self-contained story. Not a lot of interaction with Kirito in the early chapters. He also will not be joining the guild because the events that lead to that aren't going to be happening. Maybe he'll run into a similar guild, because that interaction and loss is important for his character. I don't know yet. I'm still in the early stages of figuring out this story. If ya'll have any ideas I'd be happy to hear 'em!


End file.
